As most of the troops leave the area, I am sure that this DIY solution will still be made by the locals. It'll be like radiation detectors in Japan's Fukushima area. It is a sad state of affairs. Perhaps the mindset that is creating the IEDs will start to evolve past violence sometime soon.

Cabe, this is a great development. Many of our casualties in Iraq and Afghanistan, if not a majority, are from IEDs. Being able to detect the chemical signature from a distance will help minimize this. It is all we can do to use our technological edge to remain one step ahead of the terrorists.

It won't be too much longer and hardware design, as we used to know it, will be remembered alongside the slide rule and the Karnaugh map. You will need to move beyond those familiar bits and bytes into the new world of software centric design.

People who want to take advantage of solar energy in their homes no longer need to install a bolt-on solar-panel system atop their houses -- they can integrate solar-energy-harvesting shingles directing into an existing or new roof instead.

Kaspersky Labs indicated at its February meeting that cyber attacks are far more sophisticated than previous thought. It turns out even air-gapping (disconnecting computers from the Internet to protect against cyber intrusion) isn’t a foolproof way to avoid getting hacked. And Kaspersky implied the NSA is the smartest attacker.

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